Without a Blanket
by Duo Himura
Summary: Hector and Florina end up stranded in the midst of a blizzard. The rest of the army goes to rescue them... and become lost themselves. The classic blanket scenario, sans the blanket, sans the melodrama, sans the badly written romance.


_Author Note: Long time no see, Duo here. Well, okay, not nearly as long as my last break, but it wasn't two weeks either. As you probably have noticed, this is not a continuation of Back to the Past of the Future… well, there's a perfectly good explanation for that, and that is that I felt like writing this, and I'm on vacation for about a week, so I'm taking advantage of that time to write an honest-to-God fanfic for the first time in a while. Plus it's also been a while since I did anything FE related (this is the first all year, whether by the calendar or by the school system, even!)._

_So…10 Simple Rules. Somehow, when I wasn't looking, it got a whole lot of hits, though relatively few reviews and such. I'm not entirely surprised, it's a very… striking title, I suppose. Buuuut… I screwed it up. To be perfectly honest, the sheer degree to which Nino was OOC bothers me, and anything that was supposed to be dramatic didn't have nearly enough thought put into it. There's something to be said for writing and not stoping until you hit the end, but in my case, I need something to keep myself in check once in a while or I write stuff I end up not only thinking could be improved on, but that I actually don't like. I still enjoy rereading chunks of Of Prewedding Jitters should I happen to have it open for whatever reason, and bits of 10 Simple Rules were good, but there were other bits that bothered me._

_So this fic is the spiritual successor to 10 Simple Rules. Granted, it isn't a dating guide, but it does follow the "Hector and Florina get lost somewhere and everyone else looks for them" motif, and hopefully will do so better. In fact, I'm going so far as to more or less deliberately include only smatterings of drama at any given point. Hopefully I avoid the drama-themed mistakes of both Of Prewedding Jitters and 10 Simple Rules; the former being one uber-dramatic scene in the middle of comedy that didn't really fit, and the latter being more interspersed drama that wasn't so well written and was overdone. It's a concept that's been cooking for a while, but perhaps I haven't been plotting quite as long as I should have… oh well._

_On that note, enjoy. Oh, and my apologies if the ending isn't quite up to snuff… I sort of got into a mood where I didn't have any particularly brilliant on-the-spot ideas (which I do rely on, to an extent, I must admit), but at the same time, I wanted to finish it badly enough to keep going. Anyway, comments are, again, appreciated. Update schedule… you know better than to expect anything from me, but I do have the momentum to keep going on this one, or so I think. Not that I haven't thought that before and had it not be true but… uh… Oh, whatever. Expect more of it at some point._

**Without a Blanket**

**Chapter 1: Comedy of a Stormy Night**

It was a stormy night. Being night, and overcast, it also happened to be dark. This was, of course, purely coincidental. Hector, lord of Ostia, had managed to get himself and Florina, a Pegasus Knight sworn to House Caelin, in a completely hopeless situation. That being that they were trapped in a somewhat conveniently placed cave in the midst of a blizzard with no food and no means of escape, and no one who knew where exactly they were. The reader is here asked to note that both of them will remain fully clothed throughout the evening, quote, "kthx." They also did not huddle together under a blanket, as they did not have one, and they did not attempt to do the same with Hector's cape. As a matter of fact, they burned it: they used it to start a fire made from broken bits of Florina's spare lances, and I don't really care if you think that that violates my previous statement about them remaining fully clothed.

But all this happened a great deal later.

It was a comparatively bright and fair-skied night. The small army referred to as "Eliwood's Elite," was busy making its way back from the Port of Badon, which shall otherwise remain nameless. Forever. Anyway, having vanquished Nergal and saved the world and all, the entire group as a whole believed it didn't especially matter if they took their sweet time getting home. Except Rath, who, despite not having been in contact with his own people for years, apparently had _another _prophecy to fulfill, and, as such, had parted ways with the others a day earlier. At the time, no one even bothered to ask if he was just barely masking his dislike for everyone in the army except Lyn, though it's rather unclear as to whether this was due to foreknowledge of the answer or a complete and utter lack of insight. Thinly veiled excuses have a tendency to fly in Eliwood's Elite, for instance the amount of time it took for someone to put two and two together as to the fact that Nils and Ninian knew how to _summon dragons_.

So the group had settled down at sunset, and thrown together one of their makeshift camps for what was perhaps one of the last times they ever would. They had all more or less agreed (the words "more or less" are here used to refer to those who "agreed" under unusual circumstances, the details of which are unknown because no one dared to actually ask Matthew) to journey together back to Castle Ostia, and then begin their individual treks home from there. With the knowledge that their time together was coming to an end, there was a certain tinge of sadness in the air that threw off the sense of victory and celebration that, by all rights, should have been present throughout the group. All of this came together to make an atmosphere that was rather like throwing a mashed potato on top of a raw potato; that is, the opposite ends of the spectrum did not mesh well, the consistency was just plain weird, and many people were wondering what the point was.

"Why is there a raw potato in this bowl of mashed potatoes?" Hector asked, looking quizzically down at the bowl in his hands. The group was beginning to assemble for dinner, so he thought he'd check up on the kitchen and make sure everything was running smoothly, apparently a necessary task given the current state of affairs (and the one who was doing the cooking).

"Gaaah! I'm sorry!" A small girl (though we're assured that she's actually 14) with short green hair leapt to her feet. "I'll get it!"

"Nino, that's not-," was as far as Hector got before the contents of the bowl exploded, spraying bits of potato all over his face and the front of his armor. Not the first time his armor had been covered in bits of exploding mashed potato, as it happens, but that's another story entirely.

"Canas has been teaching you to cook, hasn't he?" he asked, blinking bits of potato from his eyes and wearing an expression that can best be described as surprise mixed with not being surprised at all, really.

"He said that this is how the book-," Nino began.

"There's a reason we don't let the man cook," Hector interrupted her.

"But he said he wanted to try this one…" Nino started again, trailing off as Hector smacked his hand against his forehead, producing a slight squishing sound as he managed to drive some of the stray spuds into his blue, slicked back hair.

"Just… never mind…" he sighed. "I'm going to go wash my face off…" and with that, he turned to leave the small tent, made rather stuffy by the fire going in its center.

"Um… sorry…" Nino said, sheepishly tugging at the hem of her skirt.

Hector simply shrugged, and, without wasting more than a moment of concern on how accustomed he was getting to have foodstuffs explode on him, left through the flap.

Of course, to the group which was assembling for dinner, the reappearance of one of their fearless leaders covered in mashed potatoes was not the most galvanizing sign of what was to come, and several, in fact, jumped back at the sight of his potatoed visage. Hector gave the group an all-purpose look he had developed over the course of their companionship, which meant something along the lines of, "Someone in our group is doing something stupid and/or ridiculous in exactly the way you would expect, and that's why I look like this," or in this case, could be translated as simply "Canas."

Suffice it to say, no one interrupted Hector on his way back to his tent. Granted, several members of the group, Matthew and Serra in particular, were hardly inclined to not approach the Ostian noble simply based on his mood or the relative amount of foodstuffs he happened to be wearing, but they weren't around. So, Hector made his way back to his tent, pushed open the flap, and was instantly greeted by a cheerful "Hello, milord."

Of course.

Matthew was sitting calmly in the middle of the tent, leaning back in an armchair that Hector distinctly recalled not being there before, but he knew better than to inquire about its origins. He was still trying to forget the last time it occurred to him to do so.

"Matthew," Hector acknowledged. After a brief pause, he added "Serra isn't hiding in here somewhere, is she?"

"I thought milord might draw the line at whining upholstery," Matthew's reply came bundled with a shrug. "By the by, milord, you've got something-,"

"I _know_," Hector interrupted. "Matthew, why are you here? We both know it's not anything good, so you may as well come out with it."

"Milord, I'm hurt!" Matthew cried, placing a hand over his chest. "I was merely coming to check on your well-being. You've seemed… out of sorts, lately."

"And _you _want…?" Hector asked with as much patience as a man whose face was covered in mashed potato could muster.

Matthew looked aghast for a moment, then, seeing that this wasn't working, instantly dropped the expression and became all business. "Milord, I'm going to put this as delicately as possible: I want your bed. And this tent, for that matter."

"Forget it."

"Milord!" Matthew protested. "Trying to sleep with Bartre's snoring would violate our laws against torturing prisoners, let alone treatment of personnel!"

Hector sighed. "You're not going to leave me alone until I agree to this, are you?"

"See, milord, I knew you'd catch on," Matthew said cheerily.

"How have you been managing this far?"

"Well, being unused to my company like your lordship's self, Lord Eliwood was rather susceptible to my… uh… offerings of help. But, as it happens," here Matthew shrugged his shoulders, holding his hands upright in a helpless gesture, "he seems dead-set on having his own quarters since we started our journey back. I can't possibly imagine why. There was another vacancy, as it happens, but it was in Florina's tent, and, well, you know how she is…" Matthew trailed off under an increasingly hostile stare from his master. Granted it still did not look very threatening, being that Hector hadn't had time to clean his face off, but even Matthew knew that there were limitations on how far he could push the noble's good humor before axes started flying at things.

"Matthew," Hector said slowly, "you have just mentioned or implied at least three things I really did not want to hear about in as many sentences. Shut. Up."

"Ah, so _now _we're on the right track!" Matthew exclaimed. "I knew if I kept at it long enough we'd come to the root of why milord has been so… is surly an appropriate word for 'ready to kill anyone who causes him the slightest bit of annoyance aside from Nino because she is, quote, 'just too damn cute,' end quote?'"

"I outrank every court in Lycia, Matthew."

"Duly noted," the blond thief answered with a nonchalant grin developed over the course of many years of death threats (It ran in the Ostian noble family. Or else it was him.). "So, I believe the three things you have now made absolutely clear you did not want mentioned in any way, shape, or form, were the facts that Lord Eliwood is now sharing a tent with our very own to-be Lady Ninian, the name Florina in general and in particular Florina's aversion to men. Unless those last two count as one, and the third was the notion, which wasn't really a serious suggestion, mind, of myself moving into the vacant bed in Florina's tent. Or-,"

"Damn it, Matthew! Out!" Hector shouted, swiping at him. The nimble rogue, however, managed to simultaneously leap from the chair and duck the blow, quite a feat, really, and even managed to evade the next strike, without once, as Hector so eloquently put it, shutting up.

"Sounds like," duck, "our young lord," sidestep, "is feeling a bit heartsick," leap a low, sweeping strike. "Perhaps milord is regretting that a certain purple-haired lady will be departing our company for Caelin in a few days?" This last bit came out hurriedly as Hector finally managed to grab Matthew by the shoulders, and promptly tossed him out through the tent flap. Poking his head back through a moment later, Matthew added "Was all that really necessary?"

"Was all that beating around the bush really necessary?" Hector turned his own phrase back on him. "Just give me your advice so I can get on with my _life_. I think the mashed potatoes are _hardening_, and God knows what sort of magical contamination they have…"

"Your point is valid, except for the simple fact that I never get tired of hearing you admit to quote 'matters of or relating to the heart,' end quote. This one in particular ranks up there with the time-,"

"The _point_, Matthew," Hector half reminded, half threatened in a way that only he could.

"Yes, yes. Very well, then, my first piece of age-old wisdom is that you should probably speak to Florina someplace off by yourselves, preferably in a location which is moderately to very romantic. And distinctly lacking in badni- I mean, bandits."

"No, really? I would have thought it would be best to go and announce all this to her right in front of everyone. _I _think she'd like it."

"There's no need for sarcasm, milord," Matthew pointed out.

"_I'll_ be the judge of that. And what was with the bandits remark? They aren't quite _that _common…"

"Fine, fine…" Matthew decided not to argue the point. "Oh, but this is important. Whatever you do, you absolutely should _not _kidnap her. Girls really don't like that sort of thing. Guys tend not to be crazy about it either, for that matter, but girls in particular-,"

"What in HELL gave you the idea that I had the faintest desire to _kidnap _her?" Hector bellowed. "I was going to ask her to have Huey fly us somewhere!"

"Well-,"

"I mean, honestly, _how _would that improve matters?" the noble demanded. "That's just silly!"

"Well… um… alright then. I guess you really didn't need my advice." Matthew shrugged, then went on, "I am taking your tent, though."

"Like Hell you are!"

"I thought your lordship had some important love confessing to get around to before a certain someone walks and/or flies out of his life forever?" Matthew said in a most Matthew-esque way.

"… This isn't over," Hector said.

"I should certainly hope not." And with that, Hector walked past Matthew and out of his tent, abandoning it to the man who was quite possibly the last person in the whole camp he would trust with it. And he was halfway back to the central campfire before he realized he still had mashed potatoes on his face.

Matthew hit his lord in the face with a slightly moistened towel (how he managed this with no plumbing remains to this day one of the more prominent of the physically improbable feats that the rogue performed over his career) before he even had time to say what had called him back to the tent. Taking advantage of the fact that Hector's face was occupied in a manner that would inhibit speech, he also saw this as an excellent time to add, "By the by, I made up that bit about Ninian moving in with Eliwood. I just lost my earplugs."

As he returned via the same route he had just taken, Hector began to make a mental list of terrible things he was going to do to Matthew, then decided to stop both because the list would inevitably be so long that he would forget it unless it were written down, and because a slightly maniacal grin was not the best expression for the task he had in mind.

"Ah, so here you were," Hector said, as he poked his head around the corner of one of the tents that littered the camp. Okay, so, given the circumstances, possibly not the best conversation opener. But jumping in surprise wasn't _too _bad. Given the circumstances.

"A-aaaah… Lord Hector…" Florina said as she turned around, her normal shyness complicated by embarrassment at her own reaction. The Pegasus behind her snorted, and, to his credit, Hector did give the beast the benefit of the doubt that it was more a reaction to his interrupting them than to him himself.

"You weren't at dinner?" Hector asked.

"Well… um…" she began, staring down at her feet nervously. "I shared a tent with Nino for a while back when Ninian was… um… dead… so, uh…"

"Ah," Hector acknowledged. Deep breath. No, wait, that would look silly… but… ah, screw it. "So… I was thinking… maybe we could go… talk somewhere? That isn't within 30 yards of everyone else, I mean…" If it were possible for a horse to roll its eyes, that is exactly what Huey would have done. "I mean… I don't… want to be away from everyone else for any sort of malicious reason or anything… We could even take Huey. That way it definitely couldn't be construed as me kidnapping you or-," Hector managed to stop himself from saying anything else by clamping his own hand over his mouth. Damn Matthew.

"Um… sure…" Fortunately, most of his last statement didn't seem to have completely registered. That, or Florina was taking advantage of this opportunity to kill him away from any witnesses for whatever reason. Okay, yeah, that tore it: Matthew was going to be assigned to assess Ilia's ability to grow crops. Preferably via hands-on experience. With several controls. Huey, meanwhile, looked as surprised, indignant, and generally baffled as an equine can look. Suffice it to say only Florina could have actually noticed, if she were paying the slightest bit of attention, that is.

Such was his state of confusion, that the winged horse didn't even think of causing trouble for Hector until the two had already mounted him, and by that point it was a little late to do anything that wouldn't affect Florina too. So there wasn't much for him to do but obediently take off and make his way in the direction he was being steered. But he did it while looking exceedingly grumpy.

Winging swiftly through the air, the three war veterans made their way up towards one of the mountains that framed the valley the army had been traveling through. They traveled in silence: Florina busy with her own thoughts, Hector doing his best not to reveal how much flying unsettled him (not exactly the first conversation one might want to take up with a Pegasus Knight), and Huey, for his part, just couldn't talk.

So absorbed were they that they didn't notice that ominous patch of clouds they were flying almost directly into, which the mountain had been shielding from view from the ground. In fact, they barely even noticed how cold it was getting until it started snowing on them. And they didn't even pay _that _very much mind until they were flipped upside down for the first time.

Wind swept around them, much in the same way that an incoming tsunami might sweep around a cat. They were buffeted, thrown about this way and that, and repeatedly used to prove that, given enough velocity, an incoming bundle of snowflakes actually _can _cause pain.

Now, many of my more well-read readers may, at this point, point out that Pegasi technically run on the air, and their wings are just used for gliding and mid-air adjustments. While this is true, it does little to no good if said air is moving fast enough to knock the Pegasus' hooves out from underneath it, effectively sending the creature sprawling, and then making its wings more of a hindrance than a help. The moral of the story is: "Shut up, I know what I'm talking about, and if I don't I can pretend." Moving on.

No? We're not moving on? Oh, right.

So, Ilia is a land of ice and snow, right? So its people are used to blizzard-like conditions, right? So, naturally, an Ilian Pegasus Knight knows exactly what to do about flying into blizzard conditions, right? As a matter of fact, they mostly do know what to do: avoid them. A grievous oversight in the Ilian Pegasus Knight training program excludes training in blizzard conditions due to the idea of training in gale-force winds being quote "completely batshit insane." And all of this just goes to show that stereotypes are an evil force in the world, and if you aren't careful of them, you'll wind up being tossed around by a blizzard. Got that, ya nappy-head- Oh, right, I can't say that. Nevermind.

"I think I saw a cave… Damn it, can you tumble through the air a little more steadily?" Hector shouted above the wind, vainly trying to point toward the mountain.

If looks from a Pegasus' face could speak, then Huey's retort was the equivalent of "So much the better, we shall fight in the shade." Except he was a bit preoccupied trying to blink snow from his eyes and keep one eye on the ground so as to maybe have a choice as to when they crashed into it, so it actually came out more to the effect of "I seem to be having tremendous difficulty with my lifestyle." If looks could kill- I mean, speak.

All of this did little good, as a sudden downdraft slammed the entire group painfully into the ground a few seconds later.

When Hector came to, he was entirely certain that he was going to kill Matthew. This was actually not significantly different from most other mornings, except that he almost decided to take the statement back when he remembered why he was facedown, being buried in snow. Almost.

Forcing himself upright, Hector realized that he had probably managed to simultaneously bruise most of his front half, which probably wouldn't speed his healing that nasty gash across his chest from- He interrupted his own train of thought as he recalled that Huey and Florina had fallen with him. Glancing around, he saw two more large lumps in the snow next to him, about 7 feet away. He ran over to them, wincing as pain shot up his right leg.

Florina was closest, strands of her purple hair still sticking out amidst the snow. "Florina!" he shouted, grabbing her by the shoulders and pulling her out of the snow. Gods… She had to be all right. Had to be. After everything they'd been through… to die from something like this… from something so stupid… impossible! There was simply no way… right? She could trade blows with men twice her size, he'd seen her do so! But still… But still-! She looked so-

A slight fluttering of her eyelids cut into Hector's thoughts. This tiny, insignificant, unconscious motion wiped that doubt from his mind, even as it wiped snow crystals away from her eyes. "Florina!" he called again.

"Uh…" Her eyes pried open slowly. "L-lord Hector?" she asked weakly. He simply nodded, overwhelmed by the sudden shift of opposing extremes his emotions had undergone.

Suddenly, her eyes snapped open, fully alert. "Huey!" she shouted as memory returned, and tried to sit bolt upright. It would have worked, had Hector not still been clutching her shoulders. In the end, she managed to break free of Hector's grasp, only to twist herself around in the process, and fall face down back into the snow. Pulling herself upright into a limping run, she dashed to where Huey lay on his side, Hector just behind her.

She brushed the snow from the Pegasus' face, and he gave a weak whinny in response. Heaving a sigh of relief, she now cleared the snow from each of Huey's legs, checking them carefully. At last she exclaimed, "You're okay! Thank goodness…" and awkwardly threw her arms around the still-prone creature's neck. For a moment, Hector thought he saw a smug look in the beast's eye, but then it was gone.

"We need to get out of the snow…" Hector said. "We actually landed pretty near that cave I saw before…" he pointed behind him a roughly man-sized hole in the mountain side, back next to his own malformed snow angel. Florina nodded, looking back at him over her shoulder, but Huey began to stir agitatedly, his legs kicking weakly and his neck straining to move.

"Ah… Huey's… claustrophobic…" Florina answered Hector's questioning gaze.

"A claustrophobic horse?" Hector asked, one eyebrow cocked. Once again, Huey was plagued by his own inability to speak. It is only this that saves us from a bitingly sarcastic remark regarding the fact that Hector had been traveling with his rider for some months already, and had done nothing; a remark which would have been cut short as Huey realized that it wasn't particularly helping his case.

Florina shrugged and began trying to help Huey back to his feet. Huey, meanwhile, was beginning to have his doubts about Florina's ability to fulfill a role as interpreter. Maybe that little mage girl knew something about Pegasi… nah. Mages seemed to dislike Pegasus Knights anyway… This was something Huey didn't entirely understand. He'd only deflected friendly spells back at their casters two or three times, and only one of those had caused any sort of negative effect. Personally, he was just as glad that that man with the monocle had turned himself bright green instead of Florina. Even if he was trying to make creamed corn.

Once again Huey's preoccupation with his thoughts had led him into an unfavorable situation without his noticing or attempting to resist: namely, Hector and Florina had managed to get him back upright and walk him halfway into the cave. Determined to not give up without a fight, Huey reared up… and cracked his head against the ceiling. After that he went along with them, fearful though he was. Personally, he didn't see how he was going to survive if those two ever mated…

No, no, better to not even think like that. Besides, Florina was usually perfectly sensible: She shared his perfectly reasonable innate dislike and distrust of human males, and they _had _ended up together, after all.

Hector and Florina had already sat down a good ten feet into the cave, so Huey decided to stop and stare at them angrily until one or both of them noticed. Unfortunately, as I believe we have mentioned before, equine facial expressions are quite difficult for humans to read, so that really didn't do much good. That, and it's hard to simultaneously maintain an angry glare and glance around nervously to make sure that the walls aren't pressing inwards.

Once inside the cave, Hector and Florina fell silent, unsure of what to say. They each avoided the other's gaze with a precision that only someone who feels _really _awkward can manage. This didn't, however, stop Hector from noticing Florina shivering, and, now that he stopped to think about it, from realizing that he himself was relatively soaked, too.

"Um…" he began. "We… need to keep warm if we're going to survive long enough for anyone to notice that we're gone. And the best way to do that is… to start a fire. Um… well… what can we burn…" he glanced around. "Ah! My cape! We absolutely don't need that for anything!" Saying this, Hector unhooked the cape from his shoulder armor, and let it fall to the ground. Luckily, it wasn't even wet, having been far enough removed from his body that there had been no heat to melt snow on it.

"I've got a spare lance or two…" Florina went over to Huey, whose angry glare now read more along the lines of "I'm tired, cold, hungry, and scared, and why aren't you doing anything about it?" Noticing Florina's own worried expression, his altered to one which could best be expressed as "So this is it, we're going to die."

The initial burst of energy that had allowed them to move quickly when they were afraid for the others' lives had now worn off, so starting the fire took some time, due to the sheer exhaustion that was setting in. However, Hector did eventually manage to snap one of the lances into several pieces and build a makeshift fire out of it, and the admittedly small flame did wonders to stave off the feeling that they were about to freeze to death.

"So, barring our impending doom, do you have any plans?" Hector blurted out in an effort to keep some form of conversation going. It was only through a great effort of will that he managed to restrain himself from slapping himself across the face after saying that. _Not the right thing to say!_ he berated himself. "I mean not like… as a…" he really had to stop doing this. He was getting to be almost as bad as Florina herself was!

"I was going to go back to Caelin with Lady Lyndis…" she said.

"Hey, what's all this 'was' business? We'll be just fine!" Granted, him trying to prevent that was the very reason they were in this mess in the first place, but even in his present state Hector wasn't about to say _that_. "In fact, I bet Eliwood and Lyn will be along to save us at any moment!"

At that very moment, Eliwood was thoroughly examining his stewed carrots. Namely, he was looking for the telltale signs that would alert him as to whether they actually _were _carrots. To think, even after that time Erk had tried to turn dirt into food (to his credit, it was a practical application) only to find out that such spells didn't hold up to the human digestive track, or taste buds, for that matter, there had been complaints about removing all of the party's spellcasters from the cooking job rotation.

"Brooding over carrots?" Matthew. Wonderful. "Milord, whatever are you on about now? You've saved the world, you got the girl, there's really not much left that you can do unless you somehow get involved in another prophecy, and, all evidence from Rath to the contrary, that seems entirely unlikely."

"Matthew, I'm just checking my carrots to make sure that they're cooked. And that they're carrots." Somehow Eliwood guessed that that answer wouldn't-

"While I prefer to agree with your lordship," (here Matthew couldn't entirely contain his grin), "I must insist that milord looks rather down." Damn.

"Well, I'm slightly concerned for Hector… he's the one who's actually seemed out of sorts, ever since the whole deal at the Dragon's Gate. I know the man thrives on conflict, but I expected a more… triumphant… attitude from him," Eliwood explained. "I think it's affecting group morale, too… Hector's always been the one who keeps us blatantly, painfully honest, after all."

"Well, now that you mention that, milord-,"

"Eliwood!" a female voice called from behind Matthew, interrupting him. A woman clad in a traditionally blue Sacaen tunic stepped into view. "Have you seen Florina anywhere? I can't seem to find her."

"Well, as I was about to tell milord Eliwood here-,"

"Lord Eliwood! Lady Lyn!" A man with violet hair wearing gray robes and a cloak of deep blue approached with a quick pace. "I've been checking one of my books on reading the weather, and those clouds could very well signal a blizzard approaching over that mountain. We should probably make ready for one if one comes."

"Are you certain?" Eliwood asked. "Not that we doubt you, Canas, it's just… that…"

"Sometimes you're dead wrong," Lyn finished for him. "For instance, that time you read the wrong entry in your book on poisonous mushrooms and-,"

"Yes, yes, I'm fully aware that Raven has good cause for a perpetual scowl," Canas admitted hurriedly. "But this time, I'm certain! I even checked with Erk."

"Lyn!" Nino jumped into the conversation, by, quite literally, jumping out from the tent where she was trying not to burn the rest of the food with mixed results, and landing on the ground in the midst of the rest of the group, who were forming a bit of a half-circle. Dusting herself off, she gasped "Those clouds are really bad! My mo- Sonia told me about them, once, and just after that it snowed so much that we had to dig out of the hideout!"

"I can lend some credibility to that." No one was entirely sure how Jaffar managed to suddenly appear out of nowhere in the middle of a circle of people with a fairly bright fire right nearby, but then, no one asked. Helping Nino up, he added, "There's no mistaking them. We could be in trouble with our current level of preparedness."

"Lady Lyndis!" a brown-haired man in green armor called. "I-,"

"We _know_ okay? There's going to be a blizzard! Everyone can stop telling us!" Lyn interrupted.

"What?" Sain said, confused. "I was just going to tell you that I'm entirely certain that this food shouldn't be served to any of our members with weaker constitutions. No offense, Nino," he amended, seeing her among those he was facing. "There's going to be a blizzard?"

"Yes just, augh! Go awa-,"

"Lady Lyndis!"

"WHAT!?" she whirled on the speaker, a man with brown hair who had a bow strapped to his back.

"Um… I was going to ask if you wanted me to keep teaching you how to use a bow, seeing as the danger is more or less over…" Wil said slowly, still not entirely sure what he had just walked into.

"Maybe we could try doing this one at a-," Eliwood's suggestion was, not surprisingly interrupted before he could finish it.

"Sain!" a man with orange hair, dressed similarly to the one he had just called, except for the fact that he was wearing red armor rather than green, approached. "I can't believe you just interrupted an important conversation to complain about the food! And when Nino was standing right there, too!"

"Oh, like you're any better! What do you think you're doing? Besides, you hated the food, too!" the green knight retorted.

"Sain, there is such a thing as tact!"

"Oh, pah, you think Nino really ca-," Sain found himself rather short of syllables when a hand was clamped over his mouth. Surprisingly enough, it belonged to Jaffar, rather than Kent, who took the opportunity to stare the knight straight in the face, and explain to him, in no uncertain terms, the benefits of his being quiet.

Meanwhile, Erk had appeared, and he and Canas enthusiastically launched into a debate over whether the coming storm would qualify under the "Run very far, very fast," or "You have no chance to survive make your time," classification.

"So _here's _where you all are!" a bald, aging man in heavy silver armor joined the others, clanking along, his voice loud enough to be audible above even the worst of the noise, yet adding to it more than silencing it.

It is a well-known fact that nothing good can come of every member of a group speaking, or attempting to speak, at the exact same time. In the vast majority of cases, this does absolutely nothing with serious consequences other than make quite a lot of people look rather foolish. However, as it happens, one key reason that magical cookbooks tend to not sell very well (aside from the fact that they have a tendency to come to resent their owners and elope with the nearest encyclopedia set) is that magical food can, quite often, be rather unstable.

So, when Matthew, who had been gradually turning paler and paler throughout the beginning of the conversation, reopened his mouth and bellowed "Would everyone just SHUT THE HELL UP?" for a brief instant, the noise aligned in such a way that the magical elements floating around the food in the camp picked up a single, coherent phrase. Said phrase, unfortunately, happened to be a section of a bolting spell.

And with that, the cooking tent exploded, and bits of gravy and very heavily burnt chicken rained down all around them. This was really quite a dramatic effect, except that Matthew was unable to immediately follow it up, due to a drumstick striking him on the back of the head, and knocking him momentarily unconscious.

"Matthew?" Eliwood stared down into the rogue's eyes several moments later, as the latter was just beginning to regain consciousness. "Are you okay?"

"I'd be a lot better if Hector and Florina weren't trapped or possibly dead on that mountain in the goddamn blizzard!" he shouted. Neither rain, nor sleet, nor blizzards, nor flying drumsticks could damper Matthew's attitude.

"WHAT?" Eliwood and Lyn shouted simultaneously.

"What in Hell are they doing there?" Eliwood demanded. "Wait… Do I…?"

"What did you do now, Matthew?" Lyn demanded.

"In this order," the rogue answered, sitting up, "Hector is trying to confess his feelings to Florina before she leaves, Florina is going along either because she doesn't know how to say 'no' or, far more likely, because she returns said feelings, Huey is going along with it because he's the bloody horse and doesn't have a say in the matter, and all _I _did was offer Hector some harmless advice which he didn't take anyway."

"Right! Let's move!" Lyn shouted.

"Right, we've got to save Hector and Florina!" Eliwood added emphatically.

"Right, so I can throw Hector off of the mountain for getting them into-," Lyn stopped mid-sentence at a glare from Eliwood. "Oh, fine, I'll only kill him a little bit."

"Why doesn't that make me feel any better?"

"In all honesty, milord," Matthew interjected, weariness creeping into his voice, "I should be greatly concerned if it did."

From there, it took only moments for the group to assemble, being used to having minimal notice before they were ambushed. Well, okay, so "minimal notice" usually referred to someone walking up to them, announcing that they were about to attack, and then having armed men spring from nowhere at them, but just the same, they got ready quickly. And most of them even managed to clean all the gravy off.

"My friends," Eliwood began. "You know the situation by now. Hector and Florina are trapped up on that mountain, and blizzard or no, we're going to save them. We can't make you come with us; it'll be dangerous for us as well. But for Lyn and myself, the risk is more than worth it. So, who is coming with us? We only need a few right now."

"Not go with? Who among us would dare to not help when their comrades are in danger?" Wallace bellowed. "After all this craziness about saving the world, is there a man here who can look me square in the eye and say that he isn't willing, no, leaping at the chance to go on that mountain and save our friends?"

"Um… actually, about that Wallace…" Eliwood said. "We were sort of hoping you'd help Merlinus guard the camp…"

"What? Me be assigned to guard duty while my allies are in danger? Never!"

"You did that for most of the battles we were in," someone in the crowd muttered.

"Silence!" he shouted. "I'm coming with and there's not a thing you can do to stop-," and with that, the heavy, armored general collapsed forward, nearly crushing Nino, who had the misfortune to be standing nearby. Matthew, who had been standing behind the now unconscious General gave Eliwood a tired thumbs up, and the Pheraen noble went on.

"So? Who's volunteering?" Eliwood asked the group. "Matthew, you're out at least until you recover a bit…"

Matthew merely gave an affirmative nod from where he was busy chaining Wallace's unconscious form to a tree.

"I'll go!" Erk called. "I may as well go where my talents would actually be useful, after all."

"You wouldn't dream of trying to rescue Lord Hector without me, would you?" Serra asked.

"Come on, Jaffar!" Nino shouted. "We'll go, too!" Jaffar nodded his assent.

"In that case, I'm coming as well," Legault added.

"If you're going, I'm going," Ninian said, addressing Eliwood personally.

Ignoring the chorus of "Awww…"s that followed that statement, Eliwood went on. "Alright, that's plenty. Lyn, why don't you lead the second group?"

"The second group? You mean, your _backup_?" she demanded.

"Lyn, _one _of us needs to survive this!"

"I have just as much right to go as you do! Florina and I are as close as you and Hector are!"

"I know that! That's why I'm asking you as a friend to do this!" Eliwood fired back.

"Fine," Lyn said grudgingly. "Two hours. We're coming after you, if you're not back by then." Addressing the rest of the group, she added, "Canas! Lucius! You'll be needed so we have a bit of magic in the second group. Sain and Kent, you guys too, and Wil, and Rebecca, and Matthew, if you've recovered. And anyone else."

"It's not… likely that we're going to be needed… is it?" Canas asked nervously.

Slightly taken aback at seeing the Druid nervous about something, Eliwood answered "Probably not… it's just a safety measure."

"Oh, okay. That's fine, then…" Canas said uneasily.

"Right, then, let's go, team!" Eliwood shouted, drawing his sword from its sheath and thrusting it towards the mountain.

"So you're telling me that you think our search party is lost?" Canas asked.

"It's been over two hours!" Lyn said, worried. "They would have at least checked back by now if everything was okay."

"You people said that this wouldn't happen!" the Druid accused.

"What's your problem?" Rebecca, an archer with green pigtails, asked him. "Don't you care about Hector and Florina?"

"Of course! But… it's a blizzard! I'm afraid of blizzards!"

"So are the rest of us!" the archer pointed out.

"No, I mean, it's like a phobia! Ever since I was little, I've been terrified of snow…"

"Snow? You're afraid of _snow_?" Rebecca asked.

"Yes, yes, I'm afraid of snow! I know it's illogical, but it's… white and… crystalline… and cold, and-and no two of them are alike, you know! They're all malicious in their own unique way!" Canas whimpered.

"We've got a problem!" Matthew announced, bursting into the tent where Lyn's group was making their plan for how to rescue their friends rescuing their other friends.

"Matthew, nothing good has ever followed you saying that," Lyn pointed out dryly.

"And nothing ever will, milady. Wallace has escaped!"

"So you're telling me that that man with absolutely no sense of direction is currently wandering around on the mountain where most of our friends are already lost?" Lyn asked him.

"Yes," Matthew said.

"And, if he finds any of them, he will try to _help _them, and we will inevitably never see them again?"

"Yes."

"You don't suppose he'd just get so lost that he wouldn't even end up on the right mountain…?" Canas said hopefully. The others simply glared at him.

"Is this really necessary?" Canas asked.

"Yes."

"But-but my snow-phobia!"

"Canas, the only way you'll ever conquer your fear is if you face it," Matthew informed the mage.

"Somehow I don't think the person who came up with that idea was thinking that you should strap people to boards and force them to face in the direction of the thing they fear."

"Yes, well, he always _was _a small thinker."

"I can walk! Really!"

"You know, I would have believed that up until you tried to cast a Flux spell at Kent… Now come on, up the mountain we go. The others are ahead of us."

"No! No! Stay back! Don't come any closer! Nooooooooo!"

"Well, hey, look on the bright side!"

"I don't have any choice!"

"Exactly!"

What happened to Eliwood and the others? What fate awaits those who have followed them? And what of Florina, Hector, and Huey, for that matter? Jeez, I really didn't answer any of the important questions this time, did I? Sucks to be you!

To be continued…

_Ending Note: Got a few things here, I guess… I'm going to go in whatever order they come to mind, though…_

"So much the better, we shall fight in the shade": _A quote attributed to somebody or other in the battle chronicled in The 300, and one of the lines used in the trailers for it. Supposedly it was something the guy actually said, but the point is, it's a famous and awesome retort._

"I seem to be having this great difficulty with my lifestyle": _This one here's from The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It' s an example of idle talk costing lives, the main character says this, and a rift in space-time carries it to the signing of a peace treaty between two warring species, only that very line is the worst insult imaginable in one of their respective languages, so they go to war…Anyway, there you go._

"So this is it, we're going to die": _Also from The Hitchhiker's Guide, a favorite line of the main character, Arthur Dent. Knowing this isn't really relevant to the joke, though…_

"You have no chance to survive make your time": _Another slightly less famous quote from the terrible game dub-job that spawned "All your base are belong to us," and said by the same person in the same scene, as it happens._

Canas' Snow Phobia: _Okay, so this is an idea that a friend of mine and I were working on… it's sort of a long story, but the short version is I'm now friends with Amethyst Bubble, author of "The Musical Project" (an awesome FE fic about reincarnations of Eliwood's Elite being brought back together under the reincarnation of Mark to put on a Broadway Musical production of their own legend), I sent her some lyrics for that fic, we got to talking…Anyway, the idea occurred to… me, I think, that it would be totally awesome if her reincarnation of Canas was terrified of snow, since a blizzard is what kills him (lamely) in his character ending. The "no two are alike" line is originally hers, and I reworked it a bit. This was supposed to be homaging that, but that part of the story isn't –written- yet so… consider it the world's first (?) and only (?) 'pre-homage.'_

The Title, Without a Blanket: _Well, this is based on the title of the movie "Without a Paddle" (which I did actually see, though I remember relatively little of it, except that it -was- pretty funny at the time). Anyway, that in itself was based on the expression "up a creek without a paddle" (I think?) so there you have the title's full origin. The reasoning behind it should be fairly obvious if you read the summary or the first paragraph of the story._

_Anyway, 'till next time, my semi-loyal readers (myself being only a semi-loyal writer, after all)._


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